Notice is hereby given that the Annual General Meeting of the MSA Vic. Chapter will be held at lunchtime during the Victorian Chapter Conference, on 18 November 2000, at the Early Music Studio, University of Melbourne (27 Royal Pde, Parkville). At the meeting, business will include reports from the President, Treasurer and Secretary, and voting for positions on the Chapter Committee for 2001.

return to Contents

Nominations are invited for the following positions on the 2001 Victorian Chapter Committee. Nominations may come from any financial member of the MSA resident in Victoria, and must be proposed and seconded by two other financial members of the MSA. A nomination form is included with this issue of Notes.
The form must be received by the current Chapter secretary Sue Cole by 20 October 2000 (address details at the bottom of the form). Please note that the original form with signatures is required, and that faxes are not acceptable.

Positions available:
     President
     Secretary
     Treasurer
     Conference Convenor
     Newsletter Editor
 
Elections will be held at the Annual General Meeting for any positions for which there is more than one nomination.

return to Contents

Saturday 18 November 2000
9.30 am–5 pm

Early Music Studio, University of Melbourne
27 Royal Pde, Parkville

Programme to be announced in late October

Call for Papers
Abstracts of 150 words for 20-minute papers should be submitted by 20 October on the form included with this newsletter to Conference Convenor Joel Crotty (address details at bottom of form). All MSA members, particularly students, are warmly encouraged to offer papers.

Registration
Registration is free and includes morning and afternoon teas; lunch will be available at local cafes. Please send your registration to the Conference Convenor Joel Crotty by 10 November using the form included with this newsletter.

2000 Musicology Prize
All papers presented at the Chapter Conference by honours and postgraduate students will be eligible for the 2000 Musicology Prize, awarded annually to the best student paper at the Chapter Conference. The Prize is valued at $250, conditional on the paper’s being submitted for consideration for publication in Musicology Australia.

Chapter Drinks
The Chapter Conference will be followed by drinks immediately after the end of the conference. All Chapter members are invited, whether able to attend the conference or not. Let the Conference Convenor know by 10 November via the registration form included with this newsletter if you are able to come.

Annual General Meeting
The Chapter Conference will include the Chapter’s AGM, which will take place at the end of the morning session.

return to Contents

“Berlioz Past, Present, Future,” Smith College, 31 March–2 April. The first of a series of international conferences under the aegis of Berlioz 2003.

It is always a rare pleasure to attend a conference where everyone’s paper is on something you are really interested in, and where everyone attends everyone else’s paper and contributes to ongoing discussion over the course of the conference. This was one of these conferences. It was organized by the Professor of Musicology at Smith College, Peter Bloom, and it would have to the best-organised conference I have ever attended. The conference was bi-lingual, French and English, and there were many participants from France. The highlight of the conference was the witty, urbane paper given by 92-year-old Jacques Barzun. Barzun announced at the conference that he had a new book about to come out, Dawn to Decadence (a study of Western civilisation from 1500 to 2000)!
A wide variety of issues was addressed at the conference, including Berlioz’s relationship to his contemporaries and to composers of the past. It was striking how many of the papers quoted from the recently published volumes of Berlioz feuilletons. The completion of the remaining  volumes of this series will be clearly an immeasurably gain to Berlioz scholarship.
One heated issue that came up in informal discussion was the recent furor created in France about the issue of whether Berlioz’s remains should be transferred to the Pantheon, some French musicologists, surprisingly, argue quite passionately against this happening, since they do not feel that Berlioz can be accurately described as “un grand homme de la République.” Polemic seems endemic to French scholarship!
Conference participants were treated with warm hospitality by the whole College, not only the Music department. It must also be noted that Smith College has money that the rest of us only dream about.

KERRY MURPHY, UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE

return to Contents

“Music as Cultural Interpretation,” 23rd National Conference of the MSA and 17th Annual Conference of the NZMS, Sydney, 27–30 April

This year’s MSA conference was convened by Allan Marett, and his team put together a varied and well-attended programme of papers and events. The highlight was certainly the chance to meet Stanley Sadie, editor of New Grove, and to hear him speak of the task of compiling the new New Grove, due for release next year. Sadie endeared himself to the assembled crowd through his understated manner and precise wit, and by his perceptive comments after many of the papers he attended.
Most sessions consisted of three parallel streams of papers. All sessions were given titles, but many lacked truly coherent themes, leading to some very odd pairings. While our Society is small and needs to be nurtured, at times one felt that a more exclusive attitude to paper acceptances might have allowed a tighter programme and a chance to hear a greater number of better-argued papers.
The chance to hear international speakers such as Susan McClary (having “moved on” from new musicology, her talk on ‘temp-work’ was less confronting than expected) and several good papers from our New Zealand colleagues, was again a source of enjoyment. Many sessions did have an elegant mix of senior students and established scholars, which often led to satisfying question times, although my own four-paper marathon session, late in the afternoon, meant a very weary audience.
The conference contained a wide variety of papers with a particular slant toward indigenous music for which one stream ran in each session. Australian women composers were also particular well represented. While the conference dinner at the Darling Mills Restaurant was pricey, all had a great evening that served to cap off a particularly successful conference.

PETER CAMPBELL, UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE

return to Contents

“Taking the Pulse: Popular Music, Pacific Contexts,” Annual Conference of International Association for the Study of Popular Music (Australian/New Zealand Chapter), RMIT, 3–5 July

The Australian/New Zealand Chapter of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music convened its 2000 Annual Conference at the School of Applied Communication, Faculty of Arts, Design and Communication, RMIT’s Melbourne City campus from 3 to 5 July. The theme, “Taking the Pulse: Popular Music, Pacific Contexts,” looked at the impact of change on popular music, music production, distribution and marketing, media and reception in Australia and internationally. A small but avid group of participants heard a range of papers and round table sessions from a wide variety of specialists from the Australian music industry, including artists, managers and recording company executives, as well as various radio and media professionals. In addition, academics from communications, media studies, cultural studies, and yes even a confessed musicologist or two, presented papers on topics ranging from censorship in Australian music to the future of popular music studies. There were also a number of social events enjoyed by participants, including a delightful conference dinner and an evening session of papers followed by a performance of the band The Disappointments, all of which fortunately turned out to be far from disappointing!

CRAIG DE WILDE, MONASH UNIVERSITY

return to Contents

Music as a Bridge: Musical Relationships between Britain and Germany 1920–1950, Freie Universität, Berlin, 13–16 July

From July 13 to 16, the Freie Universität Berlin was host to the conference Music as a Bridge: Musical Relationships between Britain and Germany 1920–1950. Organised by young scholars Dr Guido Heldt and Dr Christa Brüstle, the conference brought together some of the leading names of British and Germany musicology in a convivial and intimate setting. Alain Frogley and Duncan Hinnells gave fascinating, complementary papers on the nationalism of Ralph Vaughan Williams, Frogley highlighting the rather surprising circumstances of the award to RVW of the 1937 Hamburg Shakespeare Prize. Sophie Fuller discussed literary representations of British women composers, providing a fertile basis for subsequent papers on singer Elena Gerhardt by Jutta Raab Hansen, and on composer Ruth Gipps by Jill Halstaed. Axel Klein’s paper on cultural reflections between Irish and German music introduced a rich new field of research.
The Saturday afternoon session was devoted to British and German documentary/propaganda films, Sophie Fuller presenting the absent Jennifer Doctor’s paper on Britten and Auden's film collaboration, a topic explored further by Paul Kildea.  The conference hosts Drs Heldt and Brüstle completed an absorbing session with their papers on Eisler’s film music, including a detailed examination of films Kuhle Wampe and Nuit et Brouillard. The entire conference was marked by energetic and fruitful discussion sessions. The conference proceedings are to be published in 2001.

MEGAN PRICTOR, UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE

return to Contents

Music’s Audience:Reading and Listening to Music in Australia and England 1880–1930; University of Melbourne, 12–13 August.

This short conference was organised for the visit of Professor Stephen Banfield, Elgar Professor of Music at the University of Birmingham, who is in Australia as the Miegunyah Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the University of Melbourne. Professor Banfield’s extremely entertaining yet erudite keynote address related issues of changing speech, accent and class in Britain to changes in musical culture, from the addressivity of the late 19th-century “carnivalesque interchange” between genres, styles and tastes to the stratified “masculated” culture of the early 20th. The ideas explored also provided a useful framework within which to consider the derivative but very different social and cultural issues of the contemporaneous Australian scene.
Highlights of the conference for me included Jennifer Hill’s examination of composer Maud Fitz-Stubbs’ move from amateur to professional status in the 1890s, Thérèse Radic’s biography of Frederick Septimus Kelly (whose diaries she is editing for the National Library), and Megan Prictor’s exposé of the (to modern Australian audiences) outrageous programming practices of the BBC in its first 15 years. Within an apparently specialised theme, a wide range of topics was covered, from Tippett’s political leanings (Sue Robinson), Falla’s critical reception in England (Michael Christoforidis) and England’s claim to have invented harmony (Sue Cole), to music at late 19th-century Australian exhibitions (Jenny Royle, Anne-Marie Forbes) and the rival brass bands of St Arnauds (Sandra Baker).
The standard of the papers overall was very high, and the specialised theme attracted scholars from all over the country, leading to informed, lively and engaging discussions during question times and at the breaks between sessions. The conference, immaculately organised by Kerry Murphy, Megan Prictor and Liz Kertesz, also included a concert of songs and piano music from the 1880s and 1890s, and a dinner on Saturday night. Selected papers will be published as issue 19 of Context (see Members’ Publications for details).

TRISH SHAW, AUSTRALIAN CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY/ UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE

return to Contents

Sweethearts of Rhythm
by Kay Dreyfus. Currency Press, 1999. ill, rrp $35
A history of the all-girl dance bands and orchestras in Australia in the 1920s to 1940s, taking in the their influence on popular music, and the role of women in professional music-making in the face of discrimination.
 
Playing Ad Lib.: Improvisatory Music in Australia, 1836–1970
by John Whiteoak. Sydney: Currency Press, 1999. rrp $39.95
A cultural history of improvisatory music from colonial minstrel shows to circus bands to experimental jazz and music theatre, based on the author’s PhD dissertation.
 
Australasian Music Research vol. 2–3
ed. Royston Gustavson, Suzanne Cole & Jennifer Hill. CSAM, 1999
Papers on a wide variety of topics in music of Australasia, by Dianne Gome, Wang Zheng-Ting, Bruce Steele, Peter O’Byrne, Kathleen Nelson, Adrian Thomas, Tom Hall, Roland Bannister, Jill Stubington, Gordon Spearritt and Adrienne Simpson.
Available from the Centre For Studies in Australian Music, Faculty of Music, University of Melbourne, VIC 3010; ph: 8344 5256, fax: 9349 4473 or email ozcentre@music.unimelb.edu.au
 
Context No 17 (Autumn 2000)
The latest issue of Context contains articles by Michael Christoforidis, Alan Davison, and Beth Fogerty, plus reviews of recent publications and abstracts of recently passed Australian doctoral and Master’s theses.
Issue 19 will be devoted to papers selected from the recent Music and Audience conference, and papers are currently sought for issue 20.
Contact c.magazine@music.unimelb.edu.au, phone (03) 8344 5256, or visit http://www.music.unimelb.edu.au/about/context01.html
 
Musics and Feminisms
ed. Sally Macarthur & Cate Poynton. Sydney: Australian Music Centre, 1999.
Selected papers from two conferences: “Word-Voice-Sound: Interactions around Musics” (1996) and “Resonances” (1997). Authors include Terry Threadgold, Thérèse Radic and Maree Macmillan. Available from the Australian Music Centre.

return to Contents

AUSTRALIA
 

11–12 Nov.	MSA National Study Weekend, incorporating 2000 AGM, Conservatorium of Music, University of Newcastle. See MSA National Newsletter for details.
17 Nov.	Music Publishing and Bookselling in Australia from 1788, Sir Louis Matheson Library, Monash University, Clayton. Contact Georgina Binns, Music and Multi-Media Librarian, Monash University, Clayton, 3168; email georgina.binns@lib.monash.edu.au, ph: 9905 3236, fax: 9905 9142.
18 Nov.	MSA Victorian Chapter Conference, Early Music Studio, University of Melbourne, 27 Royal Pde, Parkville. See notice in this issue.
18–22 Apr.	MSA National Conference, Melbourne. See National Newsletter for details.
30 June–       2 July	“Creating Musical Futures: Challenges to Music Education in the 21st Century,” 1st National Conference of the National Committee of Tertiary Music Schools, hosted by Southern Cross University at the Byron Bay Beach Club. Call for proposals for 20-minute presentations, up to 300 words via email, and all inquiries to Assoc. Prof. Michael Hannan at mhannan@scu.edu.au

return to Contents

OVERSEAS

For comprehensive listings see www.sun.rhbnc.ac.uk/Music/Conferences/index.html
 

22–24 Sept.	OxMAC 2000 (Music Analysis Conference), University of Oxford Faculty of Music and Society for Music Analysis. For information see http://users.ox.ac.uk/~fmm10030/OXMAC2000.html
1–5 Nov.	Toronto 2000: Music Intersections. Combined conference of fifteen societies across the USA and Canada. See www.utoronto.ca/conf2000
28 June–     1 July	2nd Biennial International Conference on Twentieth-Century Music, Dept of Music, Goldsmiths College, University of London. Deadline for proposals 8 Dec.; send to Keith Potter k.potter@gold.ac.uk
4–11 July	36th World Conference of the International Council for Traditional Music, Rio de Janeiro. Deadline for proposals 1 Oct.; send to Dr Anthony Seeger tony@folkways.si.edu. For further information see http://roar.music.columbia.edu/~ictm/first01.htm

return to Contents